It's rather unusual that live tournaments with buy-ins around $1,000 attract many (if any) players from the poker elite, but the $1,100 Omaha Hi-Low/Stud Hi-Low event at the 2017 L.A. Poker Classic managed to do just that.

The 10 nominees (selected by the public for the sixth year in a row) for the 2014 Poker Hall of Fame were announced by World Series of Poker on Tuesday. The list of nominees include 5 returning candidates (highlighted in blue) and five new players, including Daniel Negreanu who turned 40 this year and now meet the criteria* to be inducted.

Another action-packed day of poker has come to an end at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. 223 players entered Day 1B of the WPT World Championship and 138 remained at several hours of play. Jason Koon (US pro with $2.5m in live tournament earnings) bagged up 252,800 in chips at the end of play, which makes him the overall chip leader heading into Day 2.

Five events of the 44th annual WSOP concluded during the weekend. Here's a short summary.

Event #12: $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em535 players was seated when event #12 started on the 5th of June.After two days and some seven hours, there was only one player left - Lev Rofman. Mr.Rofman left the event as the last man standing and $166,136 in prize winnings. The last table below:

Place

Player

Prize

1

Lev Rofman

$166,136

2

Allen Cunningham

$102,819

3

Jaspal Brar

$68,332

4

Kenneth Shelton

$50,709

5

Anthony Harb

$38,055

6

Eric Crain

$28,839

7

Nicolas Halvorson

$22,050

8

Timothy Reilly

$16,994

9

Jean-Nicolas Fortin

$13,195

Event #13: $5,000 Seven-Card Stud Hi-Low 8-or-BetterEvent #13 concluded after three days. It was no other than Mike "The Mouth" Matusow whom secured his fourth gold bracelet and $266,503 in first-place prize. The final table concluded as below:

Place

Player

Prize

1

Mike Matusow

$266,503

2

Matthew Ashton

$164,700

3

Mike Leah

$108,412

4

David "Bakes" Baker

$79,078

5

Yuval Bronshtein

$58,835

6

Tony Cousineau

$44,543

7

Gavin Smith

$34,268

8

Vladimir Shchemelev

$26,757

Event #14: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'emThis event was also a three day battle where Jonathan Taylor out-played the field of 1,819 players. After hitting a pair of 9's on the turn in the last hand, Taylor won his bracelet and left the table with $454,424 in prize winnings. The last table finished as below:

Place

Player

Prize

1

Jonathan Taylor

$454,424

2

Blake Bohn

$281,049

3

Hunter Frey

$194,315

4

Hiren Patel

$140,143

5

Tommy Vu

$102,449

6

Patrick Kubat

$75,879

7

Jed Hoffman

$56,946

8

Dan Gannon

$43,293

9

Joseph Pergola

$33,323

Event #15: $1,500 H.O.R.S.E.862 players participated in event #15 that started on Friday, June 7th. Two days later, Tom Schneider took home his third gold bracelet and the first prize of $258,960 after terminating Owais Ahmed. The top ten finishers of event #15 below:

Place

Player

Prize

1

Tom Schneider

$258,960

2

Owais Ahmed

$159,950

3

Viatcheslav Ortynskiy

$108,701

4

Rep Porter

$75,652

5

Frankie O'Dell

$53,739

6

Scott Bohlman

$38,949

7

Eddie Blumenthal

$28,778

8

Mark Klecan

$21,679

9

George Rechnitzer

$16,629

10

Dan Heimiller

$16,629

Event #16: $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'emCanadian Mark Radoja took home the first place of the prestigious heads-up event #16. 162 participants and $1,522,800 in the total prize pool gave Mr. Radoja a nice first prize amount of $336,190. WSOP bracelet legend (13 bracelets and $12,253,057 in WSOP winnings), Phil Hellmuth finished on fifth place and earned $54,024. Below is the top eight finishers of event #16:

It's a fact that David "Viffer" Peat and Shawn "Sheikh" Sheikhan (both well-known from GSN's High Stakes Poker) don't like each other. About 2 years ago the two created headlines when they started fighting during a tournament in Las Vegas. Now history has repeated itself...

Mike "The Mouth" Matusow is the winner of the 2013 NBC National Heads-Up Championship! Matusow defeated Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi in the first round, Viktor "Isildur1" Blom in the second, Barry Greenstein in the third, John Hennigan in the quarterfinals, Scott Seiver in the semifinals and then faced Phil Hellmuth in the best-of-three-series final.

World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star is back once again and already the first day of the main event has come to an end. A total of 142 players signed up for Day 1a, and after several hours of play, 54 players remained.

Bryce Yockey (left in picture together with tournament director Matt Savage) ended the day as the chip leader with 245k. Apart from having the lead, Yockey has already earned $15,000 in this event thanks to the chip leader bonus and a Shooting Star bounty. Yockey sent Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel to the rail late in the day to add to his growing stack.

However, a few Shooting Stars still made it through Day 1a: Vanessa Selbst (125,400), Jontahan Duhamel (102.200) and Mike Matusow (83,800). Day 1b kicks off in about 8 hours and we can expect an even bigger field of players today.

The final table of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament included some really big names from the poker world: Mike Matusow & Mike Sexton just to mention 2. However, it was none of the very experienced players who made it all the way to the title but a satellite qualifier.

Day 3 of the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament has been concluded. 24 players returned to play Day 3, and after many hours of poker there were only 6 players left. Below are the 6 finalists that will battle for some serious cash at 4PM local time.

As you can see, the final table includes some fantastic poker players. It will be a very interesting and thrilling fight for the top prize of $1,039,00. Personally, I hope for Mike "The Mouth" Matusow to take down the tournament. He definitely needs the cash and he's also the most entertaining player on the final table! May the flop be with him!

The second day of the WPT Bay Shooting Star tournament in San Jose, California is over. 24 players survived they day and three Shooting Stars are still alive in the field: Mike Matusow, Kathy Liebert and Mike Sexton. However, all of them need to double up 1 or 2 times to be able to make it to the final table with a healthy stack.

Joris Springael is the leader of the pack and he will bring almost 1.5 million chips to Day 3 of the tournament. In second place is Alan Sternberg with 1,1 million chips, closely followed by Vivek Rajkumar with a little bit more than 1 million chips.

The 2 starting days of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament are already in the books. The field has been narrowed down from 415 to 170 players. The chip leader, Chris Trapani, comes from Day 1b and he will bring 197,900 chips to Day 2. For the Day 1b win, Trapani received a bonus of $10,000 and many think it's a fitting tribute to the memory of his father, Marko Trapani, who helped come up with the Shooting Star format back in 1997.

410 players paid the buy-in of $1,1000 and entered the Florida State Poker Championship Main Event at the Isle Casino and Racing in Pompano Beach. One of the participants was no one else than Mike "the mouth" Matusow who was in town for a poker seminar. And believe it or not, Mike ended up winning the whole tournament and grabbed the first-place prize of $103,000. A decent amount of money for many poker players in the world but probably peanuts for Mike Matusow who owes Ted Forrest $2 million for a weight-loss prop bet he lost a while ago. However, it seems like Mike was quite happy with the win after all.

"This title, even though, it may not be the WSOP Main Event or WPT event, was very important to me. I came down here to put on one of my famous one day power poker courses to help Florida players adjust better to the new limits and in turn I proved to people that when you are well trained and prepared you can expect to win." said Mike Matusow after the win.

About 2 months ago, Ted Forrest, the american poker pro, received a crazy prop bet from his fiends Mike Matusow and Justin Smith. The prop bet meant that if Ted Forrest could lose 50 pounds (22,68 kg) before June 15, he would get $2 million dollars. Ted Forrest, who weighed 85 kilo at that point, accepted the prop bet almost straight away. The challenge was on and Ted went on a strict diet!

When Ted stepped on the scale 2 months later, he was just skin and bones and weighed around 60 kilo. He had lost about 23 kilos and accomplished the impossible - to lose 26% of his body weight or about half a kilo almost every day for 2 months.

Day 1 of Tournament of Champions is now in the books. 22 of 27 players (20 of them chosen by popular vote) have survived and made it to the second starting day. In the top of the field is Erik Seidel (72,075) closely followed by Johnny Chan (71,325) and Mike "The Mouth" Matusow (70,575). I must say that it was a quite entertaining first day of the tournament.

Many great plays, bluffs and lay downs is what we got to see in the first day of the tournament. But maybe this is what to expect when the poker world's elite are playing cards? I'm sure that day 2 of the tournament will be as interesting as the first one, and I hope that "The Mouth" will make it far in the tournament! Not because he's the best poker player, but because he's a great entertainer at the poker table! :)

When Mike Matusow hits the "headlines" lately it's never about him winning a poker tournament or lots of cash, instead it's usually about about crazy prop bets and similar things. In a recent episode of the TV show "Poker2Nite", Mike Matusow spoke his mind regarding women's success in poker.

It seemed like he wasn't all that happy with how well women have been doing so far this year. However, Mike is sure of one thing - they wont do as well in 2010 WSOP. He's so sure of their failure that he promised to run naked down the strip in Las Vegas if they win at least 3 bracelets.

According to Phil Hellmuth's twitter, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow and Ted Forrest have a crazy prop bet going on. Ted Forrest wants to lose some weight, and Mike Matusow said that he will give him $2 million if he manage to lose 22 kilos before July 15. And if he doesn't manage till then, he will still get $1 million if he manage before 24th September. However, if he fails, then he has to give Mike $150,000.

I have my doubts that Ted Forrest will manage to lose 22 kilos in such a short time, at the same time I doubt that Mike Matusow can afford to give him $2 millions. Anyhow, it is a very interesting challenge. :)

Mike Matusow didn't get his nickname "The Mouth" for nothing. If he has something on his mind, no matter what it might be, you can bet on it that he will speak out loud. In a recent radio interview, Mike Matusow said that he cant understand why people want to watch a maniac/idiot like Isildur1 playing poker. Matusow said that he would like to play against Isildur1 and crush him at the limits he's playing - "not fucking nosebleed stakes".

Its not hard to understand that Mike Matusow don't think much of the mysterious swede as poker player, even though he used to play high stakes online like a maniac back in the days when he had the bankroll to do so. Maybe he's just angry because Isildur1 got so much attention and he didn't? Well, he shouldn't be angry. I mean, he never been even close to as successful as Isildur1 online. His live career is a different story though.

Today the very popular Full Tilt Online Poker Series started. This year there will be 25 events played during a 12 day period with over $15 million in guaranteed prize money. The buy-in for each event will be everything between $200 and $5000, but there will be many satellites for all the events which gives everyone the chance to take part and play for the big money.

Host for the first event will be no one less than Mike "The Mouth" Matusow.